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If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m referring to this tweet by Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments.

This is the confirmation that Clare tweeted about the sexuality of The Mortal Instruments character “Raphael Santiago”. In the novel series his sexuality is never stated unlike Magnus Bane’s, Alec Lightwood’s, Helen Blackthorn, and Aline Penhallow’s just to name a few. This tweet is a massive breakthrough for the asexual community and our lack of asexual characters in the media. But back to my point.

As The Mortal Instruments is now a TV show named Shadowhunters, airing on what is now called Freeform (previously known as ABC Family) and available Netflix for anyone outside of the United States, I would like the show to one up the author. Have the character canonize himself. Don’t leave it to speculation or tweet confirmations.

TV SPOILERS: In the recent episode of Shadowhunters 1×04 named Raising Hell there are subtle hints towards Magnus Bane’s bisexuality, through his links to former lover Camille Belcourt (said by Hodge Starkweather) and Magnus’ constant flirting with Alec. As well as Alec’s homosexuality through the scene with the memory demon where the demon needs to take a memory of the person they love the most. And for Alec this person is is his Parabatai Jace Wayland, which is shown to both Jace and the audience as his memory is ripped out, surprising and outing Alec in the process. Another hint towards Alec being gay is when Magnus approaches him after the stressful scene with the memory demon and telling Alec that “there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

How does any of this relate to Raphael Santiago and his asexuality? Well there are many fun creative ways in which Raphael could casually throw his sexuality into a conversation. My personal favourite, and one I myself have used in a lot of situations, is maybe Raphael could be witnessing a scene between Magnus and Alec or Clary and Jace where the sexual tension is high and Raphael could say, in his sassy snarky way, “I’m too ace for this” before walking out of the scene. Or you could have him respond to Magnus or Simon or another character asking him how he is by “I’m ace” and winking. Just having Raphael use either of the words “asexual” or “ace” in a casual conversation would be enough. You don’t have to make it a big deal. Just like Bellamy Blake in the CWs The 100 didn’t when he casually included into the conversation that Nathan Miller had a boyfriend.

This is so important to the ace community and I because there is so very few canon asexual characters. This would benefit the show even more with it’s diverse cast and characters. Plus showing that there’s more than 2 sexualities. Shadowhunters could be one of the first shows to have more than one character within the LGBTQIA community and having them all be different sexualitys. It would be the first show that I know of to include a bisexual character, a gay character, and an asexual character. I know if I wasn’t already a fan of Shadowhunters and I found out they canonized and asexual character I would start watching it in a heartbeat. And I know some of the fellow ace community would too.